Economists have destroyed the stereotype of the “beautiful more you earn”

Economists from Britain and the United States came to the conclusion that beauty is not particularly affect the wages of people. A study by American, canadian and British economists show that beautiful people earn more than people of average or below-average attractiveness. This is especially noticeable in professions such as law and management. So far, however, these studies did not take into account differences in other important characteristics between people.

Economists from Boston University and the London school of Economics and political science analyzed the dependence of wages from the visual appeal from 20,745 young Americans. To do this, they put forward three hypotheses: discrimination (beautiful people just like employers), self-selection (people choose certain types of employment with different levels of income) and individual differences (beautiful people actually just work better).

For this study, we used a national database Add Health, which contained the results of a longitudinal survey of Americans aged 16-29 years. Evaluation of attractiveness gathered in the process of personal interview with four different interviewers in four waves, in 1994-1995-m, 1996, 2001-2002, and 2007-2008. In 29 years, they were each assigned a level of physical attractiveness on a five point scale (1 — very unattractive, 2 — unattractive, 3 — average attractive 4 — attractive 5 — very attractive). Estimation of appeal summarized the following factors: bilateral facial symmetry, health, General intelligence and classical psychology the “big five personality characteristics”. At the age of 29 scientists asked the participants the level of earnings over the last year.

When comparing participants separately for all five levels of appeal found that very unattractive people on average at any age earn more than unattractive, and at the age of 29 years, more than average attractive and even very attractive people.

Next, the researchers conducted an analysis with adjustment for the level of health, education, and characteristics such as height, race, parental education and family income.

With the addition of these characteristics, it was found that the level of attractiveness has no effect on wages. In the end, healthier and more educated, tend towards extroversion and less neurotic people earn more than others.

Thus, of the three causes was confirmed only the impact of individual differences between people on the amount of wages, regardless of visual appeal. In General, the researchers came to the conclusion that the employer tends to choose the most capable and skilled workers, and even if it chooses beautiful, beauty, generally associated with other positive characteristics of the individual — health, intelligence, greater sociability, and the like.